Skadi

Man's relationship with the sea has always been one of awe and fear. Awe from its immensity and depth; fear from its power. Because we cannot explore it easily its mysteries that captivated our ancestors still resonate even today despite our technological advancements and control of our surface environment. Umi Monogatari ~Anata ga Itekureta Koto~ tells the tale of two worlds fated to be apart but still must coexist as part of the same planet. Umi Monogatari's story is part magical adventure and part romance. Marin and Urin are mermaid sisters from the sea world. One day they discover aring that has fallen from the sky world and they resolve to go to the surface to return the ring to its owner. They don’t know that the ring was thrown into the sea by the heartbroken girl Kanon, who has just broken up with her boyfriend. Marin soon finds Kanon and returns the ring but she is unwilling to accept it back. Through these actions, a dark power is accidently awoken and both Marin and Kanon discover their secret destinies. I was quite satisfied with the way the story unfolded overall. Unlike a lot of similar series the show manages to stay on task for every episode and not devolve into a series of filler and service episodes only to return to the main story near the end. There aren’t any "Marin and Urin go to school" or "Mermaids at the Hot Springs" episodes which I found quite refreshing. For the most part the story is told at a very relaxed and pleasant pace. There isn’t a lot of action though so I suspect some people will find its pacing to be boring at times. However, I felt there was a lot of powerful and complex drama, particularly near the end that kept me interested throughout. While not all of this necessarily works it was still quite enjoyable. The ending was also satisfying and complete, wrapping up all of the important story elements. Marin and Urin are both sweet and likable girls. They are naive to the surface world’s ways though perhaps not as much as they probably should have been. We get a decent amount of back-story on the relationship between the two sisters and their past but it still doesn’t feel like you really know them that well. Towards the series climax the drama surrounding them is much more compelling and powerful. Kanon feels like the most emotionally deep character in the series. She is a bit of a dark character, especially when compared to someone like Marin who is full of love and energy. Kanon is a girl who wants to be liked but just doesn’t know how to show it to people. Often what she does show is the opposite of what she feels and leads people to have the wrong impression about her. She’s referred to quite a bit as "evil" which I found a bit strange. Perhaps it is something that just can’t be translated well because she’s not an evil person. Her character grows tremendously over the series as she is able to overcome some of her emotional scars and accept and receive love as well as return it. The supporting cast is very well done. The story does a nice job of making many of them fairly deep and interesting while keeping their actual screen time to a minimum to focus on the main storyline. Kojima specifically, as he appears briefly in the first half of the series, he doesn’t speak and he is seen through Kanon's perspective. So by the time we actually see him talking, the audience will have her view about him. Though we find that Kanon's viewpoint is skewed from the truth do to her own personality quirks. For a character that probably had less than 15 minutes of screen time through the entire anime he left quite an impression. As a villain I found Sedna to be intriguing. Despite not having a physical form, she is a terrifying presence. Mainly because you can relate to that dark inner voice that everyone hears from time to time. She remains suitably mysterious throughout until the truth of her existence is finally revealed. Visually Umi Monogatari is very beautiful. Both the surface and sea worlds are lovely and the magical effects and action are gorgeously animated. The character designs are also cute and realistically proportioned. I think my favorite piece of animation though was the EN theme which was just completely adorable and matched the song perfectly. The OP theme is a bit sleepy but I thought was very fitting as an introduction to each episode. I enjoyed this series quite a bit and would give it my recommendation. Though I suspect it will not necessarily appeal to everyone due to it's pacing and lack of action. If you are in the mood for a relaxing series with good drama and romance and some lite action, then you should give this Sea Story a try.

SilentFate

Introduction: Umi Monogatari is an interesting anime, at times it seems like a harmless "slice of life" show, with vibrant characters and pretty nice visuals. Although once the story actually starts to show its true colours, you realize the show is not as light hearted as it seems and in 12 episodes, it feels as if the same themes get used over and over and over again. Story: The plot is very simple, along time ago a dark entity / witch (whos name is Sedna) was sealed in the sea as well as on land, One of the characters accidently releases the seal and the 2 main charactersare forced to combat it using their "shrine maiden" powers. One problem with the plot is the themes it uses, without spoiling too much one specific character will probably annoy you to no end, and this does last until the end of the series. i felt as if the show ran out of ideas and it gets really repetitive seeing the same basic things happen..The main theme is the concept of Light vs darkness and because of it there is alot of angst and crying in this show, and in all honesty it can get pretty depressing at times, which is odd considering how light hearted the series seems to be at first. one major theme they constantly use as well to represent the the "light" is the idea of "love" but the problem is, when one problem seems to be solved and we see the characters somewhat content, almost immideatly another problem will surface, this really irritated me because the viewers dont get the time to realize what the "answer" was. There actually are a few heart warming moments in this anime but that hardly makes the plot any less boring. my last point is the plot is very obvious so dont expect a shocking plot twist or anything. Art: The art was fine, I didn't notice any irregularities, the animation was vibrant, colors were used well. Nothing really stood out but the anime definitely looks quite nice. my only complaint is the show looks better with its vibrant colors then when its really dark / red, and unfortunately alot of the last episodes dont have many bright colors Sound: The music in this show was interesting, VERY relaxed, nothing upbeat and you could probably fall asleep pretty easily to it. Even during the short fight scenes the music was still very low toned, there is a certain violin track which plays alot you will probably get tired of. Other then that the music in my opinion is anti-climatic, it does not exactly capture the emotions being shown, but thats just my opinion, im sure alot of other people like the light hearted music. I however did enjoy the insert song, the opening and the ending were also done well but i admit to skipping them both after one listen Characters: Urin: will inevitably annoy you , i will be shocked if someone actually liked this character as she is ridiculously frustrating to watch. Although you can somewhat sympathize with her i just thought she was annoying throughout the entirety of the show. I absolutely despised her Marin: one of the 2 shrine maidens, the one who lives in the sea basically. Pretty light hearted, shes rather hard to dislike but she has her moments where you feel like giving her a "reality check" shes a pretty believable character actually. my only complaint is how oblivious she is in the beginning and how near the end she goes into a depressive cycle. Kanon: she gets the most character development, if there was a character i preffered it would probably be hers since shes believable,. She basically goes from always wanting to be in isolation to the complete opposite, but the reasoning behind it is nonsensical, she apparently has a dark aura and is "evil" and thats why people stay away from her.. forgiving that ridiculous character trait, her friendship with Marin is actually done well, so i enjoyed her as a character. Others: there are a few other characters in this series, there is Kanon's love interest who she thought dumped her but in reality she misunderstood (not too smart..) Theres Kanon's "friend" who we see like 4 times? Shes pretty pointless and doesent add much to the story. We have Kanon's rival in love who has a small arc that is actually decent to watch.. I still say the turtle is the best character in this series. Enjoyment: It's difficult to say rather i really enjoyed this series or not. In all honesty i really liked the beginning of the series, when they focused on the characters and their development but it was still light hearted, you knew the plot had a somewhat darker tone but it was still nice and colorful. I accepted this anime is not a "slice of life" series but a series with a little bit of everything. It has plenty of drama, some comedy in it, short spurts of action, character development, special powers. etc. unfortunately, alot of the episodes are really boring, chances are if you dont care about the characters you wont enjoy the final few episodes, personally i felt episodes 8-12 really dull and boring and i just wanted to get it over with. The anime is also extremely slow paced, takes a while for them to get over all the issues. Overall: 7/10, although i was contemplating a 6 this anime was decent. Its actually not a show i would reccomend but that does not make it unwatchable. Everyone has their own different opinions and im sure there is someone out there who loved this show. I felt as if it wasted potential. when the show turned from slice of life to serious i really didnt like the change so it effected my viewing, would i watch this series again? No definitely not, i was irritated at the characters (one in particular) and the plot was so, so. however the turtle is pretty much awesome so he contributes to the 7 :P Since this review is purely opinionated, feel free to agree or disagree with it. If there were any spoilers it was not intentional and i apologize.